Sunset at Wurundjeri Spur Lookout (Kew)

It has been almost 30 years since I shot landscapes with a film camera and so I set out on a Tuesday night a couple of weeks ago with my Mamiya 645 Pro TL excited and slightly nervous about it.

I had scouted out the location at Wurundjeri Spur lookout in Kew a few days before and knew that on this night the sun would set as close to the city as it would get looking at it from this vantage point.

One of my boys accompnied me on the trip with his own goals - to photograph his bike in the same location (he's a mad Mountain Biker).

There are a number of good vantage points at Wurundjeri Spur Lookout where you can see the city. Some are fairly clear while others have the challenge of photographing through trees and bushes.

On my scouting I found one spot where the trees almost perfectly framed the city and I spent the majority of time here. There is only one small branch on the tree on the left which covers the city a little and I wasn't about to deface the tree to remove it!

The first three shots were from that point.

I was shooting with two different film backs - one loaded with Kodak Ektar 100 which is a film with punchier colors. This was what the first two shots were shot on.

The other film was Portra 400 which is the third shot. It has a soften rendering of color which I love for portraits but thought might be worth a try here. I prefer the Ektar but it is good to know that if I can't get a hold of it Portra can work too.

The other experiments I was doing in this situation was using a couple of different lenses - a 55mm and an 85mm. Not wanting to get too technical but because I'm shooting on a larger film these lenses have the equivalent focal lengths of a 35mm and a 50mm. The first shot is with 85mm and the others are all shot on the 55mm (slight cropping in a couple).

Once we had finished shooting from this vantage point we drove a few hundred meters down Yarra Boulevard where there is an overpass that goes over the freeway. It was getting a little late by this point but we managed to shoot a few shots looking down the freeway toward the city.

The last shot above is from this spot which I shot with a longer exposure time to capture the light trails.

I tried to do minimal post processing on these shots. The color variations are largely due to the different times of the sunset (and in the case of the third shot the different film).

In hindsight I wish I'd positioned myself a little differently for these shots as the cars were obscured a little by vegetation along the freeway which spoils the sweeping lines a little.

All in all it was a fun evening and a spot I look forward to revisiting as it isn't too far from home.